Re: OT: Need help with numeric bases

Staving H S Teoh:

> >         Next up: floating numbers!
>[snip]
>
>Hmm, I had a crack at it this morning, but it turns out to be more tricky
>than I thought. One reason is that under your system, 2 ash can also be
>written as 1.8 ash, or 1.78 ash, or even 1.777778 ash. So depending on
>whether you want to force a specific number of octals/ashals, you'll have
>the script returning 1.778 ash for 2 ash, etc..
>
>And I'm not sure what your convention is for fractions between 0 and 1: I
>suppose you just have a single octal point in front followed by the
>mantissa? In which case, 1 ash = .8 ash = .78 ash = .778 ash, ... etc..
>
>Very interesting system, I must say, though having multiple possible
>representations of the same number may not necessarily be something
>desirable. Perhaps one solution is to force rounding up if the last digit
>of the mantissa comes out as 8.
This seem like the ideal time to mention that I once invented a complex
number base, ie base (1+i). Even hardened mathematicians thought that was
wierd.

Pete Bleackley